Digital Communications, Revised Edition

Ananda Mitra

Description

Between September 2006 and May 2007, the online networking site Facebook doubled its number of visitors to 26 million. Today, it has more than 300 million active users worldwide. Though Facebook is just one tool people use to connect with each other, the myriad of other websites such as MySpace and the estimated 2 billion cellphones in use worldwide mean that more people than ever are using digital communication. Digital Communications, Revised Edition looks at the digital tools used during interpersonal communication, such as cell phones, electronic mail, chat rooms, and social networking websites and how personal weblogs (blogs) and personally produced audio programs (podcasts) can serve to relay messages to the masses. This engaging volume also reveals the dangers of digital communication among people with bad intentions (i.e., spam and scams) and takes a look at future trends in digital communication and the effects of these tools on those people who have grown up with this digital communication access.

Sujets

• Computers
• Young Adult Nonfiction
• Informatique
• Theory
• Cellular
• Research
• Communications
• Electronic
• Digital
• Technique

Informations

• Publié par: Infobase Publishing
• Date de parution: 01 mars 2020
• Nombre de lectures: 1
• EAN13: 9781438182698
• Langue: English

Extrait

Digital Communications, Revised Edition
Copyright © 2020 by Infobase
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage or retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher. For more information, contact:
Chelsea House An imprint of Infobase 132 West 31st Street New York NY 10001
ISBN 978-1-4381-8269-8
You can find Chelsea House on the World Wide Web at http://www.infobase.com
Contents Chapters Introduction Interpersonal Communication Group Communication Cyber Community Mass Communication International Communication Concerns About Digital Communication In the Future Recent Developments: Digital Communications Support Materials Chronology Further Resources
Chapters
Introduction

Between October 2006 and October 2007, the number of members on a social networking Web site called Facebook grew 125 percent from 8 million to nearly 19 million. The Web site allows members to create a personal profile featuring information about them that other friends and Facebook members can view. Facebook and other social networking Web sites offer new opportunities of communication, allowing people to use digital tools to connect with one another. By translating words and letters into the zeros and ones of the binary system, digital technology has transformed communication into a high-tech, almost instant process. Web sites, applications, and programs like Facebook and Skype have contributed to the increasing adoption of digital tools for communication, changing the ways people interact and work with one another.
Digital Communications focuses on the different ways in which digital technologies have been adapted for communication practices. The volume is divided into eight chapters, each looking at different aspects of digital communication, beginning with a description of how computers can be used for interpersonal communication, and then describing the ways in which computers are impacting other forms of communication, eventually concluding in Chapter 8 with a discussion of the future of digital communication.
One of the most important forms of communication is interpersonal communication, more commonly recognized as the interaction between people or among members of a group. Traditional interpersonal communication depended on face-to-face dialogue between people. The influence of digital technologies on the process of interpersonal communication with the advent of tools such as digital cell phones and electronic mail has changed the format of interpersonal communication. According to the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) 2008 World Fact Book , there were 270 million cell phone subscribers in the United States in that year alone. The number has gone up since then, and Chapter 2 examines the role of advanced cell phones and smartphones that have many different functions in fostering interpersonal communication. Chapter 2 also examines the role of electronic mail (e-mail) in increasing the opportunities for communication between people who are geographically distant from each other. These forms of interpersonal communication also provide the foundation for group communication, which is discussed in Chapter 3.
Human civilization has relied on small groups that collect together and take action. In such situations, people have to communicate with several other individuals in order to reach a specific goal. This form of communication leads to the formation of communities and networks of people who often develop long-standing relationships. Digital technologies have helped to build and maintain such relationships, as discussed in Chapters 3 and 4. There are tools—such as chat rooms, bulletin boards, and social networking Web sites—that help to develop cyber communities of people who only need a networked computer, or a computer that is connected to a larger system of other computers, to connect to each other. As pointed out in Chapter 5, the ease of connection has helped to create cyber communities, where the members might be spread out worldwide, but they can still maintain relationships, because they use digital tools to stay in touch and be informed about the lives of others. Because these digital tools are widely available, Web sites such as Second Life (SL) have been able to create rich cyber communities where millions of subscribers can interact with one another and build relationships, regardless of place and time. The way in which information is shared also has been influenced by the advent of digital tools, as discussed in Chapter 5.

In most communication situations, a sender would create a message by encoding it into recognizable symbols like the English language and send it over a channel like a telephone. The message is decoded by the receiver who provides a messsage back that acts as feedback. Sometimes the process is disturbed by external noise like static on the phone line that disrupts the smooth flow of communication.
Source: Infobase.
Mass communication is typically composed of broadcast media, such as television, and mass media, such as film. Media companies like the Cable News Network (CNN) usually produce a mass-communicated message and then use a tool, like television or the Internet, to distribute that message to a large and anonymous audience. The combination of the Internet and easy access to computers makes it possible for any individual to become a mass communicator. Chapter 5 also examines the ways in which personal Web logs (blogs) and personally produced audio programs (podcasts) can serve as a mass media message. These Internet messages are accessible to anyone with a networked computer, and this availability alters the way in which mass communication is defined in the digital age.
One of the key aspects of mass communication deals with the reach of the message. With traditional mass communication tools like radio, the message could be sent only as far as the radio waves could go. Most of broadcast media was restricted by the geographical reach of radio waves. The digital technologies overcame this hurdle by using a method that ensures that the digital information travels over thousands of miles. This expanded reach resulted in new forms of international communication, as discussed in Chapter 6.
The global nature of the Internet has changed the way in which people from different nations and cultures communicate with one another. Chapter 6 examines the impact of digital technologies in international communication, which involves both interpersonal communication between individuals belonging to different cultures as well as communication between nations. The chapter focuses on the ways in which e-mail has allowed more people to interact with a worldwide community. It is no longer important to know where a person is, as long as the person's e-mail address is available. The chapter also examines the way in which the Web has become a worldwide mass media, where it is possible to instantaneously access information from many different nations using any networked computer. This is leading to the development of a new global village, in line with the predictions of the Canadian scholar Marshall McLuhan, who suggested that new technologies will shrink the world to the size of a village where everyone will be able to communicate with one another. New technologies are creating the condition for universal communication and widespread access to information.
New technologies, however, also can be misused for illegal purposes, since e-mail, Web sites, and other Internet applications can be used to gather personal information, possibly resulting in identity theft or other crimes. Chapter 7 examines some of the perils of digital communication, focusing on novel crimes such as phishing, where malicious Internet operators covertly collect personal details to be used later in spam and scams. The Internet provides a sense of anonymity that is often abused by people with bad intentions.
The volume concludes with a discussion of some of the future trends in digital communication, such as the increasing trend toward building gadgets that would serve multiple purposes like the iTouch, or communication devices like smartphones This trend could make it easier for people to stay in touch, which results in an increase in use of social networking tools. This is especially true for future generations, because many teenagers of the early twenty-first century are growing up with tools such as Facebook, and it is quite likely they will continue to use similar tools as they grow into adulthood. Such trends could change the way business is done in the future, where electronic relationships could play a very important role in communication practices.
Entry Author: Mitra, Ananda, Ph.D.
Interpersonal Communication

In 1980, an average person might have been puzzled by the term electronic mail, or e-mail, but in April 2007 a research company called IDC that specializes in estimating the future of technology claimed in a press release "that nearly 97 billion e-mails" would be sent, every day, in 2007. Although there is no way to accurately measure the actual number of e-mails sent every day, it is clear that e-mail is an extremely popular way for people to communicate with each other. This chapter examines the ways in which interpersonal communication has been changed with the use of digital communication tools. Communication scholars like Em Griffin would contend that interpersonal communication is a special form of communication that takes place between two individuals, where the people follow a certain set of rules to exchange messages. In many ways, the special aspects of interpersonal communication through the use of telephones, cell phones, e-mail, and other electronic tools have changed how messages are exchanged between people.
Sarah Trenholm and Arth